Previews

Preview: Hands on with TERA

Let's face it: once you strip away superficial fluff such as narrative
settings, graphics, and faction organization, it's almost impossible to
find an MMO that doesn't feel very much like most others when it comes
to the nuts and bolts of combat. At times this issue even runs to
extremes. My keybinds for my Vigilance Jedi Guardian in Star Wars: The
Old Republic, for instance, almost precisely mirror those of my Arms
Warrior in World of Warcraft. That commonality is what TERA, a
Korean-built MMORPG that's being introduced to the West by En Masse
Entertainment, seeks to defy.

Trumpeting itself as the "first true
action MMO," TERA has less in common with Rift and Lord of the Rings
Online than it has with console favorites like God of War and Bayonetta
thanks to its fast-paced combat system. And since so many MMO players
are clamoring for "something different" lately, TERA could potentially
add that spark that players have been waiting for. Suffice it to say
that my keybinds in TERA are entirely different -- since I played it
with a gamepad.

Most of the violence in TERA starts when characters mistake each other for Justin Bieber.

I've personally waited for this one for a long time -- so much so that
I barely bothered with the keyboard while I played. My weapon of choice
was a wired MadCatz F.P.S. Pro Controller, and I was pleased to see
that TERA registered the gamepad and allowed me to start using it
within seconds. Once in combat, its uses are fairly obvious thanks to a
small blueprint of the controller with my abilities on the screen. My
attack abilities were mapped to three of the four basic action buttons
(leaving at least one for jumping), with the left and right bumper pads
used to access less important abilities via the same buttons. From
there, I jumped into a MMO experience that's like few others on the
market.

Gamepad and keyboard controls, cats and dogs living together...mass hysteria!

That's partly because targeting in TERA revolves around lining up
crosshairs rather simply clicking on an enemy or hitting the tab
button, and offensive abilities only connected if my weapon or spell
actually hit the creatures. In other words, there's a very likely
chance that I'd miss my target here. Enemies in TERA also feature
collision detection as a nod to third-person action games, which
creates a refreshing dynamic between tanks and other classes since
neither my character nor enemies could run through each other.

Different Tools for Different Jobs

I often
missed my target with ranged abilities with the gamepad.

The
gamepad approach works particularly well for melee classes thanks to
its similarity to the many action-adventure games, but the
approach is decidedly more awkward when I logged in to a premade sorcerer
character. Almost immediately, I found myself fighting one of the
much-vaunted Big-Ass Monsters (or BAMs), which appear to fight much
like real players and occasionally dodge out of the way of incoming
attacks. In contrast to the rather intuitive melee combat, I often
missed my target with ranged abilities with the gamepad,
particularly when I had to fight off the smaller enemies that pulled
with the BAM. A mouse would probably be much better for ranged
characters.

Hitting a monster this big is like aiming at the broad side of a barn.

In short, using the gamepad is a comfortable approach, especially while
leveling, but I could easily see players getting frustrated with one
once they jump into high-intensity settings such as raids and
instances. Trying to turn around quickly never loses its awkwardness,
for instance, and the extra button needed to activate some abilities
might mean all the difference between life and death in the fast-paced
combat. Dodging is crucial in TERA -- think God of War on hard mode --
and that split second needed to avoid an attack might be better
performed on a keyboard since abilities aren't based so much on combos.
I imagine a gamepad would be especially awkward for anyone playing a
healer, since you'll have to use the crosshairs to direct your healing
mojo at a player instead of simply clicking on their nameplate and
firing off a healing spell. In this case, an old-fashioned mouse and
keyboard is going to beat out a gamepad any day, particularly when
you're stuck trying to heal a diminutive race like the fuzzy
Pandaren-like Popori.

Better dodge -- this armor covers virtually nothing.

It's almost impossible not to be
impressed by the characters themselves.

But even if you find yourself a little frustrated by complications with
crosshairs-based combat such as these, it's almost impossible not to be
impressed by the characters themselves. With six races and eight
character classes to choose from on a robust creation screen, you'll
likely find a character model that you like. And as befits a game that
invariably produces links relating to a famous porn star when you
search for information about it on Google with safe search off, it's
hard to escape notice that TERA places a high emphasis on its scantily
clad women. If that's not your thing, you could always strut around
with one of the male-model avatars or the hulking Baraka, but it's
obvious from the marketing that TERA's women take center stage. And
should you ever tire of watching your avatar, however, the world itself
is quite magnificent to look at. Many of my early levels focused on
splendorous Isle of Dawn, whose striking colors seemed at odds with the
husky browns the Unreal Engine 3 is known for.

And you thought Night Elves were racy. That's a lot of sternum!

Even so, the most beautiful graphics in gaming history mean nothing if
they slow down performance past the point of playability. Thus I found
nothing so impressive in TERA as an almost total absence of lag.
Granted, I was playing on a press preview account that presented me
with a largely empty world without the complicating influence of other
players, but TERA ran beautifully at the highest settings on an
Alienware M11x laptop despite its graphical complexity. This same
machine suffers from somewhat poor framerates in a few graphically
intensive portions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I never once
felt like TERA inadequately responded to my gamepad or causing me to
die through framerate glitches. Considering that the entire game
revolves around fast-paced combat, that consideration in itself speaks
volumes of the work that's gone into TERA.

TERA's smooth framerate takes action like this in stride.

After playing, my main area of concern is that once you strip away the
action combat and the breathtaking visuals, the basic leveling process
seems to revolve around the same grindy formula that you'll find in
existing MMOs. I enjoyed the combat, but I never really felt engaged in
the story. You'll occasionally stumble across some impressive
cinematics that move the story along, but the quests themselves amount
to little more than reading quest text and then running out and killing
creatures and collecting and items. After just stepping away from The
Old Republic's fully voiced quests and sampling The Secret World's partly
voiced ones, the whole questing setup seems a few years out of date in
comparison to the refreshing combat system. The good news, from what I
could tell in my brief time with the game, is that you're never in one
place for too long.

That's but a brief taste of TERA, and in the coming weeks I'll get a
chance to play more and try out some of the more community-focused
features, such as its promising political system.

Spy Guy says: So Star Wars: The Old Republic reinvents story but has typical MMO combat, and TERA reinvents combat but has typical MMO story. If only we could put TOR and TERA together... we'd have TORA.